The Imports and Exports of the United Kingdom of Great Britain from and to the United States, and from and to other Foreign Countries and British Possessions, in 1859, compared. Compiled from the Annual Statement of the Trade and Navigation of the United Kingdom with Foreign Countries and British Possessions for the same Year. The Exports include only domestic Produce; and the Imports, only those remaining for consumption after deducting the Re-exportations. • The importations of Breadstuffs from the United States have been very fluctuating. The amount taken in 1859 was less than in any other year since 1844. — See Appendix, Nos. 97 and 100. ↑ See Appendix, No. 101. — See also Note relating to the comparative Trade-reports of England and the United States, page 55 of the text. 49 m This great trade is important to England, not only from the amount of the com modities exchanged, but also, and perhaps in a higher degree, from the character of those commodities. Cotton, the indispensable raw material, amounts, in the aggregate of British imports, to $124,032,805, or eighty-four per cent of the whole. Her own manufactured articles, for which a foreign market is so necessary, make up the bulk of her exports to our country. Breadstuffs and provisions, which are usually very considerable items in the list of imports from America, happened to be comparatively small in 1859.1 TABLE L. The Increase and Decrease of the Total Foreign Trade of Great Britain, as compared with the Increase and Decrease of her Trade with the United States, since 1854. Compiled from the British Annual Reports of Trade and Navigation. • See note on the comparative results of the trade-reports of England and the United States, p. 55 of text. In table L we have the means of comparing the increase and decrease of British imports and exports from and to the United States for five years, ending 1859, with the increase and decrease of the total British imports and exports during the same period. While the general exports of England increased during the time nearly twenty per cent, her exports to the United States decreased eleven per cent. Not so, however, with English imports from this country, which increased more than ten per cent. This steadily growing balance against England, in her trade with the United States, is a fact worthy of careful attention; and one, we may be well assured, which she does not overlook. 1 This is the latest year for which I have been able to get the English official returns. While it is natural that England should contemplate with serious concern the probable loss of a customer so valuable as our country has been to her, we are not to suppose that this is the whole ground of her anxiety. Detrimental as such an event would be to her, she would yet, doubtless, survive the blow, provided that her condition elsewhere should remain unchanged. That which England cannot withstand, and which, therefore, she has the utmost reason to dread, is a successful competition with her manufactures in the neutral markets of the world. On that field, as she well knows, she is likely to meet but one rival. In the United States alone, she beholds a people, with natural resources for sustaining such a competition, in all respects equal, and in some respects superior, to her own. While England is, and must continue to be, largely dependent on foreign countries, we have all the requisites of production, and an energetic population to employ them, nowhere surpassed in intelligence, ingenuity, enterprise, or perseverance. The accumulation of capital, the large experience, and the well-arranged business system, which give to England a present advantage over us, are the only conditions needful to a success fully equal to hers; and these are conditions which time, under a wiser and more stable public policy, will assuredly supply. THE CONDITION AND RESOURCES OF THE UNITED STATES. By men of other countries, we have been often charged with exaggeration in the estimates which we make of our natural resources. This is not to be wondered at. To people who, in this respect, are far less favored than ourselves, the simple truth may well appear not only fiction, but stranger than fiction. It needs but a glance at the map of North America to see that our limits include the whole of its really desirable territory,―that very portion, indeed, which, if a distribution were to be made anew, any sensible nation would unhesitatingly choose. On the north, we reach up to a latitude so high and severe, that we are glad to stop, and willingly leave to our British brethren and our Russian allies all that lies between us and the Arctic circle. In the opposite direction, too, we pause quite as cheerfully just this side of the Northern tropic, and envy our Mexican and West-Indian neighbors neither the luxuries nor the plagues of their torrid clime. Spanning the continent, with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the almost boundless Pacific on the other, our Union spreads and stretches its magnificent zone of more than twenty degrees in latitude, and nearly three thousand miles in length. No one can look at the hydrography of this vast region, without a prompt and full appreciation of its unrivalled water-privileges. In extent of coast, whether of sea, lake, or gulf; in number and value of harbors; and in the means of inland navigation, whether of sound, lake, or river,— what portion of the globe surpasses ours?1 An immense area of rich and varied soil, lying under a wide range of climate, enables us to raise in abundance and with certainty all the most valued products of the temperate zones, and virtually insures us against those terrible dangers of dearth and famine which still sometimes invade our sister-nations of the Old World. Besides the wealth of our vast and well-timbered forests, and all the teeming acres which are now under cultivation, we have yet in reserve a breadth of virgin soil amply sufficient to give employment and sustenance to all the pauper millions of Europe.3 Nor are our riches all on the surface. In mines and placers of gold, only one nation can compete with us. Of silver, copper, lead, zinc, and mercury, we have large supplies; while iron (more valuable than all the rest) is widely diffused, and inexhaustible in quantity. But it is in the almost incredible richness of our coal deposits 1 The entire main shore-line of the United States, as estimated in 1853, is 12,609 miles. If to this we add the shore of the bays, sounds, and islands, and of navigable streams to the head of tide-water, we obtain a total shore-line of 33,069 miles. On the rivers and bayous connected with the Mississippi alone, there are 16,674 miles of steam-navigation. The area of the Great Western lakes, shared in part by Great Britain, is but little short of a hundred thousand square miles. The sounds, bays, and lagoons which stretch along the whole line of our Atlantic and Gulf coast, form, in the aggregate, a vast extent of water, and furnish a safe and convenient inland navigation of great value. The public lands of the United States, not including the territory ceded by Mexico in 1853, were estimated in 1859 at 1,584,000,000 acres. • The following table, from Mr. WHITNEY's work on the metallic wealth of the United States, gives the estimated value of gold, silver, mercury, tin, copper, zinc, lead, and iron produced in the principal producing countries during the year 1854. It also shows the ratio of their production; that of the United States being taken as a unit in one column, and that of Great Britain in the other. Considering the immense development of our coal-fields, and the quantity of our iron ores of every possible variety, it is difficult to set any limits to our possible production of iron. The facilities of internal communication by canal, or steamboat and railroad, already ample, are daily increasing; and new works are constructing to bring every section of the country into connection with the nearest and most valuable coal and iron districts. It may, indeed, be said with truth, that our capacity for producing this most important metal is unrivalled. - The Metallic Wealth of the United States described, and compared with that of other Countries, by J. D. Whitney, p. 486. The magnetic, hematite, and clay-iron stone are all found abundantly in the United States. The magnetic ores are worked in New England, New York, and New Jersey; the hematite also in New York and New Jersey, but especially in Pennsylvania and other localities. Vast deposits of this mineral beyond the Alleghanies, with coal everywhere at hand, indicate that the Great Western Valley will become, at no distant day, the chief seat of our iron manufactures. At present, the annual manufacture of this article in the United States is about one-third of the same product in England. While the supply of superior iron ores is said to be materially decreasing in Great Britain, we have but just begun to work our own. See J. Smith Homans's Cyclopedia of Commerce and Commercial Navigation, 1859; see also Fairbairn's Paper on Iron.-Appendix, No. 111. that mineral which has become so essential to individual comfort, to manufacturing success, to swift locomotion on land or water, to prosperity in peace, to efficiency in war, and indeed to all true national wealth and power that we leave behind, at an immeasurable distance, every other country on the face of the earth.1. Nor can we justly be charged with having neglected to use and develop these gifts of Nature. We have deepened and protected the entrances to our harbors, have made our rivers more navigable, and have connected the ocean with the interior by means of long and costly canals. In number and length of railways, no country vies with ours. Mountain-ranges of formidable height, and vast plains which once seemed of interminable length, are now traversed easily and quickly on the iron track. More quickly still, the telegraphic wire conveys over every part of our immense republic the orders of Government, and the messages of business and of friendship; so that parts of the country once widely separated in thought as well as space, are now, for all the purposes of intercourse, placed, as it were, side by side. Five million tons of shipping employed in our foreign and coasting trade, and Belgium feet) To approximate more correctly to the relative amounts of coal in the several great coal-fields of the world, we must compare the cubic quantities deduced from the foregoing statements of the areas in square miles, and the respective depths of available coal; thus calculated: Belgium (assuming her coal-fields to have an France (with same thickness) about Tous. 36,000,000,000 190,000,000,000 316,400,000,000 1,387,500,000,000 4,000,000,000,000 -Rogers's Geology of Pennsylvania, vol. 2, part 2, p. 1017. For some very interesting facts and calculations in regard to the increasing difficulties and the prospective exhaustion of British coal-mining, see London Quarterly Review, No. 220; article on "Life, Enterprise, and Peril in Coal-mines." In 1854, there were in the United States (including certain cases of improved rives-navigation) 5,076 miles of canal. Of these, 1,166 miles were in Pennsylvania, 996 in New York, 972 in Ohio, and 420 in Indiana. Of single canals, the Erie, in New York, is 364 miles in length; the Wabash and Erie, in Indiana, 368 miles; the Ohio and Erie, in Ohio, 307 miles; the Chesapeake and Ohio, in Maryland, 184 miles; the James River, in Virginia, 148 miles; and there are more which are over 100 miles each. The New-York system of canals, constructed without aid from the National Governinent, cost (apart from interest) $58,371,790; and the commercial tonnage borne upon them, in 1860, was more than seventy per cent as much as the entire import and export tonnage of the United States. - See Report to New-York Legislature of 1862 by Committee on Canais. Of the 70,200 miles of railway-track now laid on the globe, 82,000 miles belong to the United States. 4 There are now in use within the limits of the United States over sixty thousand miles of telegraphic wires. |